


But You Didn't

by Snurtlicious



Category: Free!
Genre: Car Accidents, M/M, Sad, im sorry i didnt want it to be like this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 14:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2390963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snurtlicious/pseuds/Snurtlicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After moving off to college with Makoto, Haruka experiences extreme sadness and loss when Makoto is in a car accident and goes into a coma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But You Didn't

Based on [This](http://snurtlicious.tumblr.com/post/97931649641) post.

Listen to [This](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_U6iSAn_fY) for added effect.

“ _You hold me without touch,_

_You keep me without chains,_

_I never wanted anything so much,_

_Than to drown in your love,_

_And not feel your rain.”_

Sara Bareilles, Gravity

It happened suddenly, like all bad things. One day Makoto was here, right in front of me, joking about skipping classes and studying for tests, the next, he was lying in a hospital bed. Witnesses said that he was looking down at his phone when he stepped into the street. He didn’t even have a chance to look up before the truck punched him ten feet down the highway. I’d called his parents faster than I even knew my fingers could dial. It was a long ride from Iwatobi to Tokyo, but out of shock, the time had seemed like a blink.

I sat in stunned silence, hovering over his bed when they came in. They didn’t have his younger siblings with them, probably out of concern for their psychological well-beings. It wasn’t until I saw his mom’s face that the tears came hot and fast out of my face, slipping down my chin and onto my chest.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep him safe, I’m sorry.” I kept repeating that over and over again, hoping that if I said it enough that he would wake up in the bed and tell me to stop worrying so much. Mrs. Tachibana, however, was stronger than I. Before I knew what happened, she had wrapped me in a hug and was trying to console me. Me. Instead of mourning for her son, she was trying to make me feel better. I was being selfish. This wasn’t about me.

“It’s okay, Haruka, there’s nothing you could have done. The officers said the truck ran the light. Makoto never did anything wrong.” She whispered, trying to soothe my tears. Even I tried to stem the flow, but it was no use. All I did was watch as a stream of doctors swept in and out, along with the tears sweeping out of my eyes.

They mumbled something about concussion in hushed tones, brain damage, swelling, possible hemorrhaging. It was too much for me. The time came when visiting hours closed, and the nurse escorted Mr. and Mrs. Tachibana away. I couldn’t leave, no matter who came in and tried to prod me away. Makoto would never have left my side, and I wouldn’t leave his. Despite my trauma, I managed to fall asleep, my hand clenched in his.

The nurses came in early the next morning, pushing me out of the way. What was I doing here again? I cracked my eyes open and stifled a scream. I could taste the bitter tone of iron from where I’d bitten down on my tongue. Makoto was still unconscious. Hadn’t it been over twelve hours? Was he ever going to wake up? These questions swirled in my mind as the nurse informed me that they were prepping him for an emergency surgery to relieve the pressure around his brain. I didn’t leave his side.

I followed him for as far as I was able to, and even farther than that. The only time I let him out of my sight was when he headed into the operating room. I walked into the waiting room and tried to buy a bottle of water from the vending machine. I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking though, and I dropped all of the change to the floor. Next thing I knew, I was curled up in a chair with my head on someone’s lap.

I looked up to see Mrs. Tachibana was holding my head like you would hold a baby to comfort it. I couldn’t help but cry again, alerting her to my awareness. I quickly jolted up.

“Haruka, it’s alright. I’m here for you.” She reached out and placed her hand on my shoulder. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and her eyes looked like she had been crying hard. Mrs. Tachibana had always looked younger than she could have been. She always claimed something about her kids kept her feeling young, but today, she just looked… old.

I nodded at her, and bit back down on my tongue to suppress the tears. The taste of blood and pain were a good reminder that I wasn’t the important one here. Makoto was in surgery for his brain. We wouldn’t know how extensive the damage was or if he would even survive. She handed me the bottle of water that I was too weak to purchase on my own.

“His father is off in the observation room. I was going to follow, but I saw the nurses run in here when you collapsed and I couldn’t leave you alone like that. You know that after all this, that I love you like you’re my own, Haruka.” Her eyes welled up with tears, causing all of my fragile strength to shatter.

“I love you too, Mrs. Tachibana. I know I keep saying I’m sorry, but I can’t find any other words to express how… disappointed I am in myself for not keeping Makoto safe. I just wish I had told him that I loved him before this.” I frowned, feeling a hollow in my chest grow. She placed her hand on mine, and a single tear rolled down her cheek.

“I’m sure he knows, Haru. I’m sure he knows,” was all she said. We sat there, in a not awkward silence for what seemed like decades. Many other somber looking faces came in and out in the time we had been there. I’d never been to the hospital here before, but it was nothing like the one in Iwatobi. Doctors and nurses were constantly bustling around the sterile white and green interior, passing off clipboards and other items to each other. It almost would’ve been interesting to watch without considering the circumstances of the visit.

After numbing my mind for as long as I could stand, I tried to find something to do. Even taking a walk around the hospital courtyard was better than this. I stopped in at the bathroom before I went out. I relieved myself and stopped in front of the mirror. My hair looked like I tried to spike it up with gel and failed, and my eyes looked like I’d been smoking something illegal. I even had a black shadow around my jaw from where I hadn’t shaved at. I looked like a homeless vagabond.

I passed through the automatic door into the light of the early afternoon. Somehow, almost an entire day had gone by. I tried to quiet my thoughts as I passed silently between the sand-colored stone buildings. Looking at them compared to the sky reminded me of the beach in Iwatobi, of swimming with… Makoto. Had Rei and Nagisa heard anything? Should I call them and tell them what happened? I had to stop walking for a moment and press my forehead into the gritty outer wall.

Nagisa, Rei, Rin, and Gou would never forgive me. I had one job, one goal, to keep him safe, and I failed. What good was I then? How could I call myself his best friend if I let him nearly die?

Die? Could he really die? Suddenly, I slid down into the grass and felt the tears fall freely again. I could barely breathe; I just couldn’t imagine him not being there. Not giving me his silly head tilt and smirk. Or scolding me for trying to climb into bodies of water. My life would be empty with a void that no one could ever replace.

After curling into the fetal position, I realized that I couldn’t just stay there on the ground. Someone could walk by and alert the nurses, and I needed to be there for Mrs. Tachibana. I slapped myself hard and began heading back to the waiting room. I had no idea how long I’d been gone for. I hadn’t turned my phone on since last night. When I stepped into the waiting room, she was still there, in the exact same place, staring off into space.

“They’re supposed to be finished soon. The surgeon said that there was no massive brain injury, but the swelling had done some damage. They don’t know if he’ll wake up.” Her voice cracked and her façade broke. Finally, I was able to comfort her and not cry. I just needed to do what I had always done and put a lid on my emotions. They were messy and got in the way most of the time. I didn’t see it as apathy, it was more like… limiting.

“It’s going to be fine, Mom. I promise.” I wasn’t sure I believed that myself, but it was all I could do to keep it together. She calmed down and tried to make idle conversation about how school and swimming were going. I tried to carry on my part of the conversation, but the atmosphere of the room was just too heavy and each conversation slowly dwindled away.

Mr. Tachibana clicked into the room, his easygoing smirk replaced with a hard line. It was almost heartbreaking to see them look like this. He said they had finished the surgery and that Makoto was resting comfortably in the Intensive Care Unit. We weren’t allowed to see him until they were sure that his wounds were stable, so I bid the Tachibanas farewell with a kiss from Mom and a hug from Dad. I bit down onto that same spot on my tongue to remind myself.

The room where Makoto and I lived was painfully cold without him. I wanted nothing more than to fill the bathtub up and just climb inside, but all I could picture was Makoto’s grinning face, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just collapsed into his bed, hungry and alone.

I guess my phone had come back on in my pocket, because it suddenly rang and scared me half to death. My heart dropped when I realized that it was Nagisa.

“Haru, Haru, what’s going on?” He whined as soon as I answered. “Rei said he heard that something awful had happened to you and Mako!”

I struggled to find the right words. There wasn’t an easy way to say this. “Nagisa, I…” My voice broke. My breathing picked up and I had to take a second.

“Are you alright, Haru? You sound like you can’t breathe!” He sounded worried. That made it even harder.

“Nagisa, I hate to tell you this, but Makoto was in an accident yesterday. He’s in the hospital and they don’t know when he’ll wake up.” I held my voice steady. I heard a crash and the sound of gross sobbing coming from the other end. Nagisa had dropped the phone. I felt tears come to my eyes, but there was no use. They wouldn’t flow out.

I waited five, ten, twenty minutes for him to pick the phone back up, but he didn’t. All I could do was listen to him and a woman’s voice try to calm him down. I eventually just pressed the end button, but I was surprised to see that it was already midmorning again. Somehow massive trauma just seemed to make time pass in a snap. I decided to get into the bath just long enough to bathe, but not to linger.

It was a painful realization that I hadn’t eaten in two days. I pulled a can of mackerel out of the fridge and grilled it on our tiny stove. Somehow, it just wasn’t as good without Makoto here. I cleaned up and slipped my shoes on. I wanted to hurry to the hospital. It was possible that Makoto would wake up soon. He had to wake up soon.

I spent the better part of twenty minutes trying to find a nurse’s station in the ICU. I finally pinned a nurse down and made her tell me where to go. Stopping in front of the cubicle, I asked a tired looking woman where I could find Tachibana Makoto.

“She’s in room 3-A. Just go down to your left and it’s the third door on your right.” She droned. I rolled my eyes. Of course the nurse would call Makoto a ‘she’. We were the group of girly names, after all. My heart rate sped as I pushed the door open. A doctor was standing over his bed taking some readings. My heart caught in my throat when I saw the white gauze bandages wrapped around his head. They probably had to shave some of his hair off for this. His perfect brown hair.

“Can I help you?” He asked, fixing the clipboard to the front of his bed.

“I’m Nanase Haruka, Tachibana’s cousin. I’m here to check on him.” I lied. I’d only watched a little bit of hospital shows, but they always let you stay if you were related.

“Well, Mr. Nanase, I’m sorry to tell you that his condition hasn’t improved. He shows some signs of brain activity, but there’s no indication of when he’ll wake up. He’s been on life support all night.” The doctor’s expression sagged. I felt mine do the same.

“Is there nothing more that can be done?” I pleaded, trying to keep my voice down.

“I’m afraid not. Only time will tell now.” He sped past me, clearly predicting that I would have a strong negative reaction. I did.

I screamed out of three days of pain, sadness, loneliness, agony, everything I’d felt. I pressed my face into his chest.

“Makoto, wake up, please wake up Makoto. I can’t live without you, please come back.” I watched as the tears dripped down onto his blanket, staining it darkly. My nose ran fiercely and my saliva thickened in my mouth. I squeezed his hand as a large man came in to drag me away. “I love you, Makoto. I know you can hear me. I love you!” I shouted as I was pulled out of the room.

That was the last time I was allowed back into that hospital. I was kept up to date on what was happening with him, though. The Tachibanas elected to have him moved to the hospital in Iwatobi so that he could be nearby. The doctors said that he wasn’t brain dead, and that he would wake up any day. They kept him on life support.

After everything that had happened, I couldn’t handle school or swimming competitively anymore. I dropped out of school and broke my contract. Rin tried to convince me to keep swimming, but I couldn’t bring myself to care anymore. I’d found my dream, and in an instant, everything came crashing down around me.

I moved back to Iwatobi and got an apartment. A single room, single bath. I worked two jobs, nearly sixteen hours a day, to help pay for Makoto’s hospital bills. The Tachibanas still had two more children to raise, so it was the least I could do. Time began to pass, and each month, I put away a little bit of money for myself.

There was an old, decrepit building out near the shores that I’d had my eye on, and once I finally saved up enough money, I purchased it. It had been nearly a year by then. I continued to visit Makoto as often as work would allow, but stealing hours to renovate the building limited that time even more, and so sometimes weeks would quietly creep by between my visits.

Nagisa and Rei were both horrified when I returned from Tokyo, but they didn’t blame me. No one ever blamed me. No one did. They stayed in Iwatobi for as long as they could, and we even visited Makoto together occasionally. However, like all good things, it came to an end. Nagisa managed to make stellar grades for most of his schooling, so he followed Rei to a prestigious university in northern Japan.

Sometime along the way, I’d lost all of my friends. Everyone had gone off to live their lives, but I couldn’t move on, not without him. I guess I couldn’t say I hadn’t moved on to some extent. I intended this building to be a tribute to Makoto, so if he ever came back to me, we could be together here and he could take all the time he needed to recover.

As time wore on, though, I began to grow complacent. Working my two jobs all these years had begun to wear down on me, and slowly my time spent on renovations slowed down. I managed to do maybe two or three hours a week still, but it wasn’t nearly productive enough to make any nominal difference in a short time.

Finally, though, I completed my renovations for the building. Carrying around heavy boxes and other things had managed to keep me in at least decent shape, but three years later, Makoto was starting to show a little wear. It was the day before I opened the building up to the public. I quit both my jobs and informed the Tachibanas of what I’d completed.

I stepped into the room where Makoto had slept like an angel for all this time. No tears came to my eyes anymore. My heart had been hardened by three years of this sadness. I pulled the rolling table near his bed over and sat a business card down on it.

‘ _Makoto’s Café’_ is what it read. It was the only thing my heart could muster. I sat down on the edge of the bed and pushed his bangs out of his eyes. His hair was cut periodically for cleanliness and convenience, so it was like no time had passed. Other than being thinner and marginally less muscular, he looked the same as he had all this time.

“Makoto, it’s me.” I whispered. “The café opens tomorrow. It’s nearly the third anniversary since you’ve been gone.” I felt a deep wound open inside of me. I never sought any help, any therapy, any counseling for my grief. It fueled me to keep going, to help him in whatever miniscule way I was able to. For the first time in literal years, I felt liquid fall from my eyes. I almost laughed out of grief.

“I never stopped missing you, Makoto. I never stopped loving you, and I will never stop waiting for you to wake up.” I leaned in and pressed my lips gently to his. “I love you, Makoto.”

As usual, there was no reply. I don’t know what I expected. This wasn’t a fairytale. I wasn’t going to kiss my prince and have him magically wake up. I pressed my face into my hands and cried for all the years that we had missed, that we would miss, that I could never spend holding him.

“Haru,” My blood turned ice cold. Now my mind was just being cruel, making me hear his voice like this. I sometimes heard it in my sleep, but never like this.

“Haru.” I heard again. I couldn’t turn, I couldn’t look.

“No, don’t do this to me. If I turn over and this isn’t real, I can’t do this anymore, Makoto.” I wiped the hot tears from my face. My heart went into overdrive and I turned my head over so gently to see his hand twitch and then I spun as fast as I could.

Weary green eyes stared into my cold, broken blue ones. No words could express what I felt in that moment, all I could do was press my forehead to his and let rivers flow freely from my eyes.

“Are you real? Please tell me this isn’t a dream.” I sobbed, holding onto the blanket with a white knuckle death grip.

“Haru, what… what happened to me? Where are we?” He tried to lean forward. I gently grabbed him and forced him back down.

“Stop, you’ve…” I faltered. I couldn’t…

It had been so long. So many of these feelings were just repressed guilt, sadness, fear that he would wake up and not love me anymore.

“It’s been three years, Makoto. You’ve been asleep for three years.” The tears never stopped.

Suddenly his droopy eyes shot open. “Haru, what are you talking about? There’s no way it’s been three years, we were just talking about going out!” He grunted and started breathing heavily.

“Please,” I whispered. “Calm down, Makoto. I’m here for you. I’m never going to let you leave me again.” I rose from the bed and stepped out into the hall to call a nurse. It began a whirlwind of events that I never imagined would happen. The Tachibana family finally got their reunion, and I had never seen so many crying, smiling faces in one room.

Even Rei and Nagisa made it back to see him. However, the visits had to be short, and were usually followed by a brief visit from a psychotherapist. Since he had been lying in bed for three years, it was understandable that his heart, and the rest of his muscles, were weak. Too much anxiety or stress could cause him to go into cardiac arrest, or worse.

So we took the months slowly. The café opened as planned, and it was actually so popular, that I was able to hire additional staff so I didn’t have to work nearly as much as I used to and I made two times as much as I did before. This allowed me to take the financial burden off of the Tachibanas completely, and I paid for all of his physical therapy.

I visited him during therapy almost every day, as an encouragement. My favorite was when we would get in the pool. It felt like old times, and I honestly swam for the first time when he returned. It wasn’t a sight I’d never seen, but it was a sight I thought I’d never see again.

More time passed, and Makoto was finally cleared to leave the hospital. I had moved, as well. My parents were free spirits and, wanting to move away from Japan, they deeded the house to me. It was perfect timing, and Makoto and I quickly moved in together to pick up at least somewhere near where we’d left off.

We sat down to dinner together, alone for the first time.

I had rehearsed what I wanted to say to him a hundred, no, a thousand times, but I still felt anxious. I sat down across from him and steeled myself.

“Makoto.” He smiled and did his head tilt, gently pressing his eyes closed. “I want to talk to you about something, something serious.” I looked down at my plate.

“Sure, Haru, you know you can tell my anything.” He replied, sticking his hand out on the table. I wanted to reach out and take it into mine, but I hesitated.

“The day that you had your accident was the single worst day of my life.” I looked up at him. “I thought that I might as well have died too. We never thought you would wake up, and I struggled to go on for a long time without you. Only complacency drove me to go forward.”

“Haru, I—” I put my hand on his.

“Please,” I stopped him. “Let me finish, Makoto. I felt guilt and shame like I’d never known and I was afraid that if you did wake up, that you wouldn’t love me anymore, that you would scorn me because I was on the other end of that phone when that truck hit you. I was responsible. You almost died and it was my fault, my fault, my fault.” I pulled my hand back and pressed it into my forehead. God, I couldn’t stop crying, bottling up my emotions never really worked to begin with.

“Haru,” He stood and pulled me out of my chair and into a tight hug. He was always taller, bigger than me. I loved being pulled into his arms. “I could never blame you for anything. It was my mistake for not watching where I was going. I love you, Haru. I could always hear you tell me when you came to visit. I never stopped believing in you.” He rubbed the back on my head.

“Makoto, I’m sorry.” I whispered, feeling worn out.

“You don’t need to apologize to me anymore.” He leaned his head down and pressed his lips into a kiss on mine. “I love you, alright?”

I nodded. “I love you, Makoto Tachibana. I’ll never stop.”

Time continued to progress, and we stayed together. I still woke him up in the middle of the night, afraid that he might slip away from me again, but it never happened. He eventually came to work with me at the café, and then went to work for Iwatobi Swim Club Returns. Watching him come back to life was the happiest time of my life, and eventually we promised to stay together forever.

It was everything that I ever wanted.

“Makoto, I was afraid you were going to leave me, but you didn’t.” I said to him one day. He pulled me into a hug and never let me go. He kissed me and I let my fears go.

_I love you, Makoto Tachibana._ And I did.

**Author's Note:**

> okay so this is the first (and probably only) Free! fic that I'll write, but I tried to keep it in character for Haru, but Idk how well I actually did. I hope you liked it and it made you sad and then happy bc that was the goal, lesbihonest.


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